


i miss you, please come back (i was never gone, we do not do that)

by beepbedeep



Category: Let It Snow (Movie)
Genre: F/M, I like this one, breakups are messy and hard!, but they BELONG TOGETHER I PROMISE, you will too!! i think!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:41:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22094248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beepbedeep/pseuds/beepbedeep
Summary: So the first breakup is over, almost before it’s begun, and they easily slip back into their familiar best-friends-and-making-out relationship (that normal people call “dating”).
Relationships: Angie "The Duke"/Tobin
Kudos: 18





	i miss you, please come back (i was never gone, we do not do that)

The first time they break up it’s weird. Like, _super weird_. 

The breakup lasts all of forty-eight hours, but those forty-eight hours were so viscerally uncomfortable that Tobin winces every time he thinks about them. Their fight had been silly, not really about anything except their mutual inability to deal with the fact that college was quickly rounding the corner (him to New Orleans, her to Seattle), but after a weekend of feeling terrible Angie showed up to his house on Sunday night, apologizing for being kind of a dick about the future (because when Angie is scared she ignores the problem with every atom in her being, like an ostrich with its head buried in the sand, which never stops sucking, but eventually they both get a little better at recognizing their unfortunate coping mechanisms and maybe being a hundred percent happy all the time would be boring anyway) and when Tobin almost says sorry before she does (because he runs, expects someone else to fix things, doesn’t want to face problems until the potential of destruction is seven seconds away) they both burst out laughing (because, above all, they understand the other, they are _always here_ , they are opposite sides of the same coin, they are equal weights in a balancing act, they are people who love each other). 

So the first breakup is over, almost before it’s begun, and they easily slip back into their familiar best-friends-and-making-out relationship (that normal people call “dating”). (note: the transition from “just friends” to whatever they exactly are now was easier than either imagined, the gap between where they were and where they wanted to be turned out to not be much of a gap at all.) They wear it well, and for a long time things are just as easy as they ever were. (easier, almost. Telling people how you feel turns out to be a very good thing.)

The next breakup is not so easy. 

It shouldn’t happen, Tobin can’t really believe that it is, because they’re both home from college on winter break, and yeah their about to leave again, _but they just did the long distance thing and it worked_. And they’ve had such a _good couple of weeks_ but here they are, Tobin can feel his eyes prickling and Angie’s face is stony (but fragile, he knows her well enough to see when she’s breaking) and they’re facing off against each other even though _neither of them did anything wrong_ but _loving someone is so hard and so easy to mess up_ and that is how their first time back from college ends (so different than how it started, with him getting back first and waiting on her porch, the way her eyes light up when she sees him and practically flies out of the car, leaving her luggage in the snow for the better part of fifteen minutes as they make out on the steps that Angie tripped on and broke her leg in 3rd grade) and this ending is _terrible_ and _something they didn’t deserve_ but he drives away, tears blurring the headlights and she doesn’t move from the spot where they last looked at each other for at least ten minutes, shivering in the cold, in the chilling absence of the one person who has always been there. 

They both go back to school a few days later and she tells herself that this is what freedom feels like, _that he does not have to be “it” for her_ , and he tries to remember how to laugh at a joke that isn’t hers, delivered with a scrunching of her nose and knowing smile. It sucks for a while and then it doesn’t and they do the requisite college-growing-and-changing, but until now they’ve always been able to grow and change together so it doesn’t really makes sense to Tobin why this should be any different. Angie steps into new worlds and tires to not feel unbalanced, like there’s a gaping hole at her side where another person should be. 

(in the end, it doesn’t stick, because they are good at many things but staying apart is not one of them. They last through three more school breaks, eleven awkward run-ins at the grocery store, five parties where they are both a little drunk and avoiding the other becomes something of an Olympic sport, and approximately three hundred and fifty seven texts each that they almost send at midnight on a Tuesday or some other equally mundane and aching time. They’re both back for the summer and end up working in the same place and _it’s stupid that we can’t be friends I miss you_ so they start talking and spend at least ten hours straight catching up about everything. The night ends with Tobin’s hands wrapped around Angie’s waist as he presses her back against the leather of his car’s interior, their lips tangling together like magnets that can’t believe they’ve spent so much time apart.)

The third breakup is nowhere near as messy as the other two, this one is after another year of being together, even though they only see each other maybe once every few months with a world’s worth of texting and facetime and snapchat filling in the gaps, after they’ve done all the things and parts are good but parts are terrible and Tobin doesn’t want the resentment that’s beginning to rear its awful heads to keep building up so he flies to see her a few weeks before finals the fall quarter of their junior year and takes them to an expensive dinner where they both laugh and once she starts to cry for seemingly no reason and after he kisses her once, long and slow, memorizing how this feels, before he draws away and says _we need to talk_. 

She nods, because she knows him, can basically read his mind, and this time they are careful and measured and only cry a little. Sentences like this _isn’t working, not right now_ and _I don’t want to trap you_ and _I need you and can we still be friends_ (of course they can, they always are) float around the room when they are done talking and when Angie’s roommate sneaks in, apologizing for taking the room back but also _guys I have an insane exam tomorrow I need to sleep_ they smile at each other and Tobin’s about to leave but Angie tugs him into a hug and this feels right, it always has and maybe they; aren’t supposed to be together but they also aren’t supposed to be apart. They’ve been holding each other like this, her head tucked underneath his chin, her arms squeezing his shoulders, for most of their lives, all the meaningful bits, and they are both sad, both with broken hearts, but the world doesn’t feel like it’s ending this time. She waves at him and does not walk him to the car (maybe because they are building boundaries but it is far more likely that if she takes a step her knees will give out and that won’t make any of this easier.) He texts her that night and she responds within five seconds, just like always. The third breakup sticks, for longer than anyone thought possible. 

They are friends, it hasn’t been like this any of the other times, and it’s _hard sometimes_ because they care so much but they _aren’t together_ and during the summer neither of them is back in town for very long because she is traveling and he is interning but they still slip back into old habits, because not being together is a thousand times easier when they don’t see each other every day, when they can’t stay up until three am talking about random things or drive around the snow for hours or show up to parties together and the _lines are blurry_ but once Addie makes a quip about them “basically dating” and Angie takes a breath like she’s going to freak out for the next six hours and not talk to Tobin for a week, but he knows her too well and smiles to remind her of the time that Keon said, “the same relationship, plus boning” because this is just how they are and _hey, please don’t leave we get so little time together_ so they both stay at the party and dance closer than two not-dating people probably would, but they aren’t dating and then they kiss in the front seat of his car the next morning when they’re both hungover and he still gives her a ride home, but they aren’t dating, and that afternoon he comes by without warning and they drive up to a snowy hill to look at stars and it’s freezing so he wraps an arm around her shoulders and she buries her head in his jacket, _but they aren’t dating_. 

Nothing changes and they text constantly and she calls him once a week (it used to be most nights, but they are still trying for those healthy boundaries) and they both date other people and have finals-week breakdowns and come home at the same times and see each other and if he keeps staring at her eyes like she holds the secret to the creation of the universe, they both pretend to not notice. 

They graduate, her graduation is before his so she flies down to Louisiana as a surprise and when his name is called she screams louder than anyone else has all day. He looks out at the crowd, finds her within seconds and smiles in the way that she thinks about when she can’t sleep some nights. After, she waits to jump/hug him the way she always does but another girl who wears a matching cap and gown emerges from the throng as he begins to make his way toward her. Other Girl kisses him, all of a sudden, and he leans into it, signaling that this is something they do a lot. _Of course_ , Angie thinks, _this is the girlfriend he never tells me about_. 

Something in her clenches or shatters and she pastes a smile on her face, because _what was she thinking, she’s been telling him for years that they don’t work when they’re dating, even though everything is perfect, because she was scared of getting too closed in too soon, of not doing college right, and Tobin is perfect, and she’s obviously not the only person to realize this and he believes her when she says they’re better as friends and of course he wouldn’t read between the lines, see that she’s been waiting for four years for them to graduate because now they can be together because now they’re adults and it’s finally time to be with the person you want to be with forever_. Her face betrays none of this as he comes up to hug her and she resolutely does NOT leap into his arms and if he notices that her eyes are glassier than usual he doesn’t say anything. That night she replies to an email from a former professor offering a work-study chance in Greece, _yes, take me away from here_. 

The third breakup seems like it’s going to last. Really. Angie curses herself, because she never wanted this, she was just scared and so fixated on being an adult that she acted like a child, throwing her favorite toy away and crying when it stops being handed back. Tobin, on an entire other continent, tries his best to be happy and stays up until the middle of the night so their times zones line up the right way and remembers that they were friends, just friends, for so long, but what they are feels empty now, like a shadow, half finished, a mirage of what it should be. 

And then, somehow, they end up back in the same town they grew up in at the same time. She finishes her time in Europe and comes home and he breaks up with Other Girl and comes home too. She drives out the airport, twelve hours after she gets in, even though that’s not required from a friend and when he wraps her in his arms and she is enveloped in his familiar smell, muted by the airplane musk and I-broke-up-with-my-girlfriend-last-weekend eyes it all comes spilling out, even as she tries to quell the stream of words.  
_ImissyouIneedyouI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryIwaswrongIwantedustogetachancetobeotherpeopleIwasscaredofforeverI’msorryI’msorryImissyousomuchithurtsIdon’twanttodothisanymore_. She’s barely gotten started before he is kissing her and eventually his lips on hers halts the words and this, kissing in an airport on no sleep and fresh heartbreak and years and years of wanting feels like coming home.

After that there are no more breakups.


End file.
